| OCR Text |
Show 1921 and here are eggs, and here is fish, and -hai! I forgot the dessert at the beginning. This little one is watermelon seeds, and this is peanuts-" "Yes, yes, peanuts," chimed in Little Winter, the ghost of a smile hovering on her lips. Of course there used to be peanuts when she kotowed to grandfather and he gave her two large cash to buy some from the peddler. Candy, too! How well she remembered! But big sister was speaking again as she arranged some broken pieces of brick along the wall. "Here are our best clothes," she said, "that father took to the pawn-shop. And here is the thickest bedquilt. He sold it, but he only brought back such a little bit of grain! And here are the two armchairs where father and grandfather used to sit." Little Winter watched for a moment, but clothes and furniture did not greatly interest her. She turned to arrange her own pieces of china, and once more began the singsong chant which the family had heard so constantly: "Last year there was good porridge. Last year there was white bread. Last year there were vegetables." A shadow fell across the steps, and father stood looking down at the game. His face had a strange expression that almost frightened them, and they thought he was going to speak, but he passed on into the house in silence. His wife and his mother looked up as he entered. "Did you go to the city?" asked the older woman. "Are the officials distributing food?" "They are distributing food," he an- THE OUTLOOK swered, listlessly, "but the food is only enough for those who are already there. No more may go to receive it." He sat looking at the mud floor for some time. At last he brought out the thought which was in his mind. "The money from the mule will soon be gone. In the city I saw them selling little girls. Five mouths are less to feed than six." "Shall a man like you sell his children?" cried the grandmother. "I am old, and their grandfather no longer lives. I had better die at once and give my food to the young." "No," said the man, heavily. "You are my mother. They are only my daughters," "Which one?" asked their mother, with a frightened face. "The big one would be worth more money," said the father, slowly, "but- but-my heart endures not Little Winter's playing; 'Last year,' always 'Last year.' Perhaps-if we sold her-the people would give her enough to eat." "You shall not do so," said the grandmother, firmly. "When have the Kuan family ever sold their daughters? She and I will go together to the river. Then there will be only four mouths, and perhaps next month the officials will feed more people." The wail of the baby interrupted her. Little Spring was coming across the yard. "The foreigner has come!" she called. "He stands on the temple steps talking. Every one goes to hear him." The family turned to the gate with one accord. The temple stood near by, 303 and the foreigner was, indeed, talking to the crowd of villagers. "The people in America have sent grain," he said. "There will not be much for each one-but enough to keep all this village alive until they send some more. All the men are to go and work on the new railway. The women and the children live at home and come every day to the temple. A man of the Jesus Church will distribute the food." "It is good," said an old man in the crowd. "Forty-two years ago I ate the food of the Jesus Church in the P'ang Family Village, at the time of the great drought. As the Jesus Church men say, so will they do. Also there is no graft." "No graft!" exclaimed the people nearest to him. "Why, then, do they do this deed for us strangers?" "Perhaps he will tell us soon," said the old man, looking towards the American, who was now giving some directions to the village elders. "It was many years ago that I heard, and I am an old man and have forgotten much. But there was talk of one Jesus, who pitied all men. He it is whom they follow." Little Winter still sat by the gate when they returned. "Last year," she was saying, "there were sometimes peanuts. Last year-" "You are making a mistake," said her father, bending over her. "Say it this way now-always this way: 'Next year there will be porridge. Next year there will be vegetables. Next year there will be white bread.' " II-WHAT CHINA MAY GAIN FROM FAMINE BY SYDNEY GREENBIE FAMINES, floods, plagues, wars within and invasions from without have tested the soul and the strength of China and its agglutinated provinces from time out of mind, but no single thing has ever come with such widespread yet intensive horror as the famine which is now devastating the greater part of the five most important northern provinces. Joseph through his interpretation of dreams saved Egypt from one such scourge. But though aliens have been prophesying this present situation in China by way of a suggested remedy for years, China has walked right into it as though still in a dream. For two years the actual danger of a food shortage hung over the northern lands. First came the floods filling the saucer-like plains. Then, as though the heavens had been drained dry, there followed uninterrupted drought lasting over two years. Every blade of grass has shriveled in the burning sun. What this has meant to the hundred million people in that region will be seen later. In the meantime the geographical conditions which caused it justify a digression to the extent of a paragraph or two. The present famine in China spreads over the greater part of five provinces- Shantung in the east, Chihli northwest of it, Honan southwest of it, Shansi in the far west, with Shensi south of it. Together they comprise an area of some 390,000 square miles, which, is remarkably close to the combined area of North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, Nebraska, and Kansas, our five great prairie and wheat-producing States. The ratio of population, however, is more startling, for, while these five States contain about 7,000,000 people, these five provinces in China, according to one computation, have more people than the entire United States. Like our States above mentioned, the five Chinese provinces are said to have been at one time the bed of a great inland water; but, unlike ours, they are closer to the sea. In consequence, their geographical status has not yet become stable. The great rivers which course through the central part of them have changed their beds several times, completely altering the topography of the country. Geographers claim that the process of forming the land is not yet over. This means that no man living there knows how long nature will tolerate him or when he will be summarily dispossessed. This means that all efforts at permanently building dikes against floods or irrigation works against drought are speculative in the extreme. It means that into the psychology of the Chinese there has been deeply graven the lessons of fate and the conviction that life is the most impermanent of things. The implications of this are far reaching. They account in part for the spirit of the Chinese in face of famine, such as has been torturing them these past five months. Inured to a devastating destiny, always on the verge of starvation, the ground literally swept from under them, they have learned to face the unknown beyond with what Westerners call fatalism and to yield "lazily" to conditions which with us would arouse violence. Yet year after year for at least five thousand years of recorded Chinese history the people of these regions, especially Shantung, have plowed in the face of nature's opposition and planted in the hope that nature would not again desert them. Time and again they have been disappointed. In 1877-8 the cost |
